School-Wide Environmental Behavior Changes 2018 - Recertification

Naturebrary Bags

In 2017, our Library Media Specialist started a new program called the Fountaindale Naturebrary. Through our Naturebrary, students can check out bags with books and materials that are meant to be used outside. Each bag contains at least one book and at least one piece of equipment that can be used in conjunction with the book. We have bags with binoculars and bird guides, local maps and compasses, and even a tree guide with leaf rubbing notebook. The Naturebrary is popular with all grades, but is a huge hit with our primary students.

Family Field Trip

Students on the Fountaindale Green Team helped to plan the first of many Family Field Trips. The first one is scheduled for Saturday, March 24th, 2018. We decided to have families meet at Washington Monument State Park near Boonsboro, Maryland. We plan to meet in the afternoon and hike to the monument. There we will stop and do some birdwatching before hiking back down.

The goal is to hold one Family Field Trip each month in an attempt to build our school community and get more families outside.

Pictures of the actual field trip will be uploaded when the event takes place.

Reduction in Paper waste

Our school is part of a one to one iPad initiative for grades 3-5. This has enabled our teachers to move toward classrooms with less paper use. Many assignments are implemented using Google Apps for Education. Work is produced by students in Google Docs and discussions take place in Google Classroom.

Teachers are also using the web application Seesaw to help students document their learning in a digital format. Users are able to upload evidence of learning through video, digital documents, and a variety of other paperless formats.

As an entire school, parent communication is close to paperless. All classroom teachers communicate with parents via email, digital newsletters, or other programs and apps.

Below you will find examples of parent communication, student communication, and student assignments all completed without creating paper waste.